The importance of reading (also, forewarning of kiddo book reviews in the coming months)

I'm in a children's literature class this semester and have decided that I will use this blog as a little tiny place to help me remember what I read for that course. I have to read children's books. A certain number each week from a certain genre. I need some place to list/remember/review what I've read for my own use and also, I figured, what's the harm in sharing? Maybe you'll have read them too, maybe not. I have a feeling that I'm really going to enjoy reading picture books again. In class we were discussing how many children learn to read in school and then lose interest at about the second grade. And we were trying to figure out why that is. I don't know much of anything about school libraries or the current trends in teaching reading to kids. I know that reading aloud to is helpful in their reading and writing skills and the more a child is read to in their early years, the more likely they are to succeed at reading and writing at a higher level once they enter the school system. But apparently there is something called "Accelerated Reader", which is a vendor who has decided to infiltrate the school districts. Districts purchase this program, test their students' reading levels, and then require kids to read only at the level that they test at in order to get satisfactory marks on their report cards. Not above that level, and not lower than that level. Only at their level. This is incredibly stifling. This means that school librarians, teachers, and parents will become even worse about the really awful habit they have of telling kids, "No, that book is too hard for you, go find a different one." or "Not another picture book. You should be reading chapter books." This is a terrible thing that's happened for a long time. People have their egos attached to the size of a book sometimes. If the book is thin, they don't think it's challenging enough. If a kid is 8 years old and still wants to read a picture book, suddenly the adults around that child are embarrassed that this child is still reading thin books when s/he could be trying to read chapter books.

Important to remember: A child will enjoy reading if they can choose what they read. If you force a kid into reading chapter books (because it makes you feel better) when they really enjoy the artwork and visual storytelling of picture books; you might find that they don't want to read anything at all any more. Aside from that, picture books are not little toddler stories. Some of them are beautifully illustrated works of literature. Think of "The Polar Express": a good story, but the illustrations are what put it on a different level from other books. Is that a toddler story, or a toddler book? No. It's a good story and a good book, despite being thin. And the visual storytelling within the pages are what make it outstanding.

One of my classmates had found this blog post and shared it. It's from January of this year, but seems to be making its way through the tunnels of the interwebs now. It's funny and I like it and the guy is a really fantastic writer, I think. It is long and I think perhaps the page break is not a coincidence. I assume he did that on purpose because perhaps those who aren't that into reading aren't going to go on to the second page? Clever, fella. Clever. You need to go to the actual blog post to read the whole thing, because I edited it quite a bit to try to get the gist without copy/pasting the entire post. It's still long, but hey, you're a reader!:

"Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. [...] Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice. [...] Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. [...] Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. [...] Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. [...] Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. [...] Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived. [...] Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. [...] But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness. [...] The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you."

Oh, good. More books!

It's misting outside! Not quite rain, but the closest thing we've had for a while. It's also really sunny and still hot, but a little thunder and some mist are enough to bring hope. I hope my lawn drinks up.

I'm trying to get through my final research paper for my summer class. It's due tomorrow and I present on it Monday evening. It took me a really long time to get a topic chosen. Like, I finally picked one yesterday. So, I'm cutting it a little close, but I think it's still do-able. I'm doing it, anyway.

I finally got my Spotify invite last week. I had to wait until I could get my own computer to an internet hotspot to download the application, but I have it and I like it. I was one of the millions of people who LOVED LaLa and still miss that website a lot. After Apple bought it out and shut it down, I had nothing to really find new music with, but Spotify has the good parts of LaLa built into it. I really like it. I'm still trying to figure out how to bookmark songs without downloading them and stuff. I think you can do it, but I'm still learning. I dig it. To my mind, LaLa was almost perfect in the ways that it allowed you to search for music. I know a lot of people really like ITunes. I'm not one of them. ITunes has never really figured out how to handle the new music and music discovery the way that LaLa and, from what I've seen, Spotify do. I just never have been able to completely get on the Apple bandwagon for a lot of reasons, and one of the big ones is that the few Apple products that I have experience with, I haven't enjoyed using the software or products. I find other things work better for me and I prefer them. However, Apple has come along and bought up a lot of the other things that I enjoy better, which also doesn't help their image to my way of thinking. If they bought out their competitors and then used the technology of the competitors to build a better product, maybe I would come around. But they don't.

I finished another book last night. I have to recommend Karen White's novels. She does a great job of doing historic research and then building a story around it, also using letters and manuscripts around it. A history/librarian's dream, I tell ya. I need to check out more on her books and see if she's written any others, or if she's in the process of writing more. Goodreads.com comes in handy with this type of stuff. For example, a quick search tells me that there are BUNCHES more books of hers that I can read. Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Sweet.